Julia Alvarez famous quotes

05-23-2025

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Inspiring #Kindness #Pay
A novel is not, after all, a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Heart #Historical #Way
Don't plan it all. Let life surprise you a little.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Littles #Surprise #Plans
There is no end to what can be said about the world
-- Julia Alvarez

#World #Ends #Said
But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn't begin when you sit down to write. It's a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Writing #Essence #Attention
Everyone needs a strong sense of self. It is our base of operations for everything that we do in life.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Strong #Self #Needs
Depression is always in the details.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Depression #Details
How we lie to ourselves when we've fallen in love with the wrong man.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Lying #Men #Dating
As a young writer, I was on guard against the Latina in me, the Spanish in me because as far as I could see the models that were presented to me did not include my world. In fact, 'I was told by one teacher in college that one could only write poetry in the language in which one first said Mother. That left me out of American literature, for sure.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Mother #Teacher #Writing
I admit that for me love goes deeper than the struggle, or maybe what I mean is, love is the deeper struggle.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Struggle #Mean #Love Is
Independence didn't have to be exile.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Independence #Exile
Each of us will have to make the choices that allow us to be the largest versions of ourselves.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Choices
I write to find out what I am thinking. I write to find out who I am. I write to understand things.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Writing #Thinking #Who I Am
A book does not discriminate against any reader. All are welcome at the table of literature.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Book #Doe #Literature
For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Writing #Heart #Doors
It doesn't make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn't we trust them instead of being afraid of them?
-- Julia Alvarez

#Secret #Sims #Policemen
It's like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I'm stitching the scraps back together.
-- Julia Alvarez

#Writing #Together #World

You may also like:

Amy Tan
Film writer
Ana Castillo
Novelist
Caridad Svich
Playwright
Cristina Garcia
Journalist
Dana Gioia
Poet
Edwidge Danticat
Author
Esmeralda Santiago
Author
Gary Soto
Author
Gloria E. AnzaldÃºa
Scholar
Isabel Allende
Writer
Jamaica Kincaid
Novelist
Junot Diaz
Writer
Laura Esquivel
Novelist
Marilyn Hacker
Poet
Marilyn Nelson
Poet
Pam MuÃ±oz Ryan
Writer
Rudolfo Anaya
Author
Sandra Cisneros
Writer
Thomas M. Disch
Author
Toni Morrison
Novelist

	
		OSZAR »